Twenty-Five and Unmarried

Since becoming pregnant I have become increasingly worried about how people will view the fact that Richard and I aren’t married. I wouldn’t say that I’m generally a person that cares what others think, but I do care what my family thinks and their fairly conservative on both sides.

On my father’s side I’m the second youngest out of eleven. It probably goes without saying that because of my age I don’t really get to be the first in many things. I definitely wasn’t the first to get a bachelors degree nor would I have been the first to get a masters. I wouldn’t have ever been the first to get married or the first to have a child. I’m not even the first to live with someone before they were married—although that was a major taboo at the time as well. I am, however, the first person to be pregnant before getting married.

While I always wanted to be the first to accomplish something on that side of the family, I can tell you this definitely wasn’t it. I mentioned before that I worry a lot that I am disappointing my family and being unmarried is definitely a primary impetus for that feeling.

Over the last few years I have watched several of my friends get married. My ex and I would talk about marriage quite frequently and inevitably when the topic came up we would discuss the type of wedding that we would like to have. I used to imagine a small, but fairly elaborate shindig and would imagine how glamorous and fun it would be to have a big party with all of my friends and my new husband.

When my ex and I broke up, I started to realize that the reason that I was so focused on a wedding was that I felt as though I had to fit some sort of perfect mold and what I was doing was somewhat akin to fitting a square peg into a round hole. I don’t think that if he had been the right man for me I would have placed nearly as much influence on the wedding portion of marriage.

Since starting to date Richard, we have both been fairly open about our views on marriage and weddings. I am vehemently against weddings, I find them to be a gigantic waste of money that could be better spent elsewhere such as a car payment, a house payment, or—oh I don’t know—a baby? I also have my fair share of problems with marriage—primarily that I hold the belief that marriage should not be regarded as a legal institution, but a religious one and that if we are going to keep marriage as a legal institution that all consenting adults should have access to that institution. Going further, I feel as though the sanctity of marriage has long since been ruined—not because of divorce, but because history demonstrates that marriage is primarily about owning women and property or women as property.

From almost the moment we started dating and definitely by the time that we were an official couple, which was roughly three months after that, I knew Richard was pretty strongly anti-marriage. He also knew, going in, that I wouldn’t stay with someone for more than five years if that were not something that would be on the table ever. Now we’ve almost been together two years and things have changed significantly for both of us. Honestly, for me, the drive to get married is stronger than before. I don’t think that it is fair to a child to have unmarried parents and I think it makes things needlessly complicated in terms of childcare and schooling, but primarily I worry about my family feeling like I’m somehow inadequate because I am not married.